Thank you Craig!

Thank you Craig!

I don't know why but the concept of Oodle.com has always troubled me. I've always seen it as a parasite eating away at businesses that worked hard with clever business plans to sell (or provide at no charge) a valuable service in classified advertising. In a previous post a few months ago I questioned the legality of these site scrapers in a post call "Is aggregration of content legal?" While there is no legal precedent yet, the practice of scraping ads walked a fine line. For one, it threatens the larger newspapers that can currently charge more money for ads because of their larger circulation or prestige because the Oodle concept flattens the availablity of ads to the consumer. While I do see some benefit for the consumer (having a single search environment for all classified ads) it doesn't do enough for me to justify the questionable practice.

This is why I was thrilled to learn that Craigslist.com, a site I think has revolutionized the classified marketplace, has banned Oodle.com from indexing their content. I think this move will start a trend that will certainly put Oodle back on the defensive and significant hurt the companies viability going forward.

Craig Newmark continues to impress me by keeping true to "Local community classifieds and forums all for free and in a relatively non-commercial environment."